PARADJANOV: FILM REVIEW
Hollywood Reporter
July 31 2013
9:53 AM PDT 7/31/2013 by Boyd van Hoeij
The Bottom Line
An unconventional biopic for an unconventional artist.
Directors Serge Avedikian and Olena Fetisova’s suitably idiosyncratic
biopic centers on the eccentric Armenian-born Soviet director Sergei
Paradjanov.
ODESSA — The eccentric life and vision of Soviet-era director Sergei
Paradjanov — a unique artist championed by the likes of Fellini,
Godard, Antonioni and Tarkovsky — are artfully suggested more
than fully documented in the suitably offbeat biopic Paradjanov,
from Ukrainian writer-director Olena Fetisova and French-Armenian
actor-director Serge Avedikian, who also plays the lead.
The film premiered at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival and also played
at Odessa, where the director’s own films were also shown, a move
that’ll likely be replicated at other festivals in 2014, when the 90th
anniversary of the Armenian-born director’s birth will be celebrated.
Paradjanov is far from a complete compendium of all the major events
in the director’s life. Indeed, in what almost amounts to a case of
willful poetic irony, the filmmaker’s two marriages and his son are
barely suggested, though his run-ins with the Communist authorities
because of his “suspected” homosexuality are documented in quite
some detail (he would eventually be sentenced to five years in
prison). The director’s second wife, Svetlana Tscherbatiuk (Russian
star Yulia Peresild), whom he divorced in 1962 , is in fact one of
the most problematic characters, occasionally floating into scenes
but never part of a clear conflict or even the recipient of some kind
of special affection from Paradjanov, who seemed to get along with
everyone willing to acknowledge his genius.
Though the film omits or skims over large swaths of biographical
detail, Paradjanov, written by co-director and producer Fetisova, is
neither a fully artistic expression of Paradjanov’s vision and poetry
that completely ignores narrative conventions in the way the master’s
most famous film, 1968’s The Color of Pomegranates, did when he made
what turned out to be a work that was only nominally a biographical
film about Sayat-Nova, Armenia’s most famous poet-troubadour.
Instead, this Ukrainian-French-Armenian-Georgian co-production
remains suspended between these two extremes, creating a narrative
throughline by staging some of the key moments in the filmmaker’s life
while occasionally making room for more absurd and surreal scenes that
suggest something of the poetic and visual powers that the visionary
filmmaker was capable of. He’s also seen directing scenes of several
of his films, including his work with actress Sofiko Chiaureli,
who played six roles in Pomegranates including the young male lead,
his muse and love interest.
It’s a gamble that mostly works, suggesting at once something of the
unique personality and of the life of the filmmaker, who arguably made
the defining film in the cinema history of not one but three countries:
Pomegranates in Armenia, Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors in Ukraine
and The Legend of Suram Fortress in Georgia (though all of these were
part of the Soviet Union during the director’s life).
That said, it is unlikely that audiences completely unfamiliar with
Paradjanov’s life and work and the authoritarian Soviet regime will
be able to fully follow everything that happens — though the film
is accessible enough for any curious arthouse enthusiast with a basic
knowledge of the region.
Co-director Avedikian is not only a good physical match for Paradjanov
but crucially, he also manages to suggest the charisma, imagination
and talent that made the man such an admired artist, making some of his
capricious diva antics almost feel well-deserved rather than annoying.
Cinematography and especially production design and costumes are key
in establishing both moods and physical spaces, with the director’s
cluttered and colorful Yerevan home, where even Marcello Mastroianni
comes by for a visit, a clear highlight.
Venue: Odessa International Film Festival Production companies:
Interfilm Production Studio, Araprod, Gemini, Paradise, Arte France
Cast: Serge Avedikian, Yulia Peresild, Karen Baladov, Zaza Kashibadze,
Alla Sergiyko, Yuriy Vysotskii, Roman Lutskiy, Konstantin Voytenko,
Ferdinando Vicentini Orgnani Directors: Serge Avedikian, Olena Fetisova
Screenwriter: Olena Fetisova Producer: Olena Fetisova Executive
producer: Volodymyr Kozyr Director of photography: Sergei Mikhalchuk
Production designer: Vladyslav Ryzhkov Music: Michel Karsky Costume
designer: Irina Gergel Editors: Alexandra Strauss, Olexandr Shvets
Sales: Interfilm Production Studio No rating, 95 minutes
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/paradjanov-film-review-594629